How to Communicate Product Changes To Your Users

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Change is tough. Presidents ride into office on calls for “Change” and are quickly hit with backlash to anything they try to implement.

Sound familiar?

When it comes time to launch a new product feature, change, or redesign, we have just finished selling to our own internal “Congress” of decision makers, making our case with metrics and user feedback, then finally getting that change to development – but that is just the start…

Users just don’t like change. As my former Director of Product put it: “People assume that if you just release a new, better feature, that people will use it and like it. But users develop habits. They don’t like to have to change the way they do things. You need to ease them into it. Don’t learn that the hard way.”

So, how do we communicate product changes to maintain positive user relationships?

As any good product person knows, you should understand your toolkit, identify your metrics, then pick the appropriate tools to drive those results.

Let’s frame this around the outcomes we want and definitely do not want:

Facebook and Spotify both use “Feature Gates” or “Feature Toggles” to switch on and off features for different user segments for phasing and damage control.

9. Education

Whether it be account managers walking through changes with clients or marketers holding educational webinars , providing users with education on how they can benefit from a new feature will receive better engagement than, “Hey – here is a [frustrating] change [for no apparent reason!]”

10. Community Engagement

Surveys, Town Halls, Forums, Customer Panels – whatever the method, engaging your most valuable (and loudest) users before considering changes will make them feel more comfortable at release time.

How?

Couchsurfing did this wrong – Removing outspoken members & popular tools without sufficient engagement can foster more resentment than growth.

Airbnb does this right – Airbnb Open & the Host Voice survey engage users and ensure every big (and potentially controversial) new feature is framed as an idea “that matters most to the community”.

There are plenty of tools to help you engage, support, and collect feedback from your users (hint hint). Take the time to maintain a close connection. It will also lead to better product decisions in the first place.

(Disclosure: I am both an Airbnb Superhost and a Couchsurfing host.)

Takeaways on Privacy, Removing Legacy Features & More

1. Never underestimate Privacy Concerns with changes to Privacy Policy

Just try to Google “User Backlash.” Almost the entire first page of results are about Privacy Policy changes at Facebook, Google, Spotify, etc.

Communicate and be transparent about any privacy policy changes. Get ahead of criticism with user feedback before release, press relationships, and clear communication.

2. Provide advanced notice

People don’t like surprises. Show your users the product before release. Let users opt-in early to get used to the idea. Facebook has mastered this.

Jared Polivka – former Director of Product at Kapost – has this to say:

In B2B? “Have Account Managers sit down with customers and walk them through the Product Roadmap to come.”

Ran a Beta? Jared recommends giving prior warning to all users before rolling out, even after beta tests: “If you don’t, it is not unheard of to have to roll back a change with a customer and relaunch with a tutorial.”

4. Offset removed features with exciting new ones

As Tinder demonstrated with its removal of Moments and introduction of Smart Profiles, excitement can make users forget about nitpicking product changes.

5. Remember Scale

5% of users reacting negatively does not seem like a lot – unless you have 10 million+ users. That is still 500,000 users. Ensure that these users feel engaged in the transition.

It is difficult to over-communicate to users. Yes, you do not want to inundate them with email after email, but follow the guidelines above and you should be able to predict and prevent any negative reaction.

Looking forward to your next big release!

Thanks go out to Jared Polivka – former Director of Product at Kapost, Marlon Misra – Product Manager at Climate Corporation, and Larry Blyth – former Product Manager at MuleSoft, for their input.

About the Author

Colin Lernell is a Product Manager at the unicorn online education and career startup Udacity (the opinions expressed in this article are those of Colin alone, and not those of Udacity). He has worked in education technology, on-demand marketplaces, crowdfunding platforms, and mobile applications, including HourlyNerd and Tilt. He specializes in Growth & Analytics, as well as Lean Prototyping & User Research. Outside of work, Colin is a former touring rock musician, startup and Star Wars geek, and goes for runs with his beagle as often as possible.

Our first post on “tools we use” (Trello & Google Docs for product management) was so popular we’d figured we’d do another one. As with Trello, this major internal process was introduced to UserVoice while I was on vacation 🙂

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